“Can we go on top of a volcano?” the inventor wanted to know.
“Not this afternoon,” I told him.
“This is a dickens of a place to spend the summer,” they all began saying. “What are we going to do? We can’t get the car either way now. It might just as well have broken through the trestle and gone down into the marsh. It’s no good to us here.”
“I say let’s leave it here and come on up to Temple Camp,” Hunt Manners said. “We’ve had trouble enough with it. Let it stay here and rot.”
I said, “Don’t let’s get discouraged. Consider the busy little mosquitoes. See how happy they are.”
“Sure,” Westy said; “and so would we be if we were in their shoes.”
“In their shoes?” Pee-wee yelled.
“They ought to wear rubbers down here,” I said. “Let’s have a meeting of the general staff to decide what we’ll do. We’re in the midst of the enemies.”
Dorry Benton said, “I vote that we go inside and shut the doors and the windows. S—lap! There’s one.”
All around we could hear bzzzzzzz, bzzzzz——